


The Last Lamb

by Lscholar



Category: Twig - Wildbow
Genre: AU, Gen, MASSIVE ENDGAME SPOILERS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 20:57:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12373908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lscholar/pseuds/Lscholar
Summary: Sylvester faces down the Lord Infante.





	The Last Lamb

 

“'Vengeance is Mine. I will repay,' saith the Lord. In due time, his foot will slip. The day of reckoning for the deaths of lambs is set, and his doom approaches.”

 

The Lord Infante, of course, needed no speaking-trumpet. He paced toward me, hands behind his back; soldiers behind him and his devil at his heels.

“I am amused,” he said, “that you think your friends innocent, and amused that you think I would kill them. To you alone I will grant the mercy of death, if you surrender."

The lambs were there around me, silent, unmoving. I coughed.

“Your Helen is broken, Sylvester. Her muscles have been irreversibly destroyed and her cravings irreversibly strengthened. She hangs hungry with her tar spur from the spire of what was once a church in New Amsterdam, as a warning of what happens to those who defy the Crown.

He spoke with authority, and I knew it had to be true. Helen vanished.

“Your Mary, Sylvester, has been allowed to retain her knives.  She will try her hardest to please the Nobles she now serves, because when they throw her away, her Lillian will go with her. Perhaps then I will have her sent to some whorehouse, unable to so much as close her eyes, until I allow her death. I haven’t yet decided.

I shut my eyes, but it was all too easy to envision her fate. I opened them again, and Mary was gone when I did. The Infante had seen, I knew.

Even that small gesture had cost me.

“Your Ashton, Sylvester, is a test subject once more. I was struck by his color, and so I arranged for my doctors to study the red plague for inspiration. They gave me something very similar, which Ashton now bears. I imagine he would enjoy the sight of himself, if he could see.

Ashton disappeared. Did the bastard even need to breathe, or could he keep speaking forever? 

"Duncan was never really yours, and so I allowed him to perish. In his last moments, as he was consumed by his own creations, he managed to cut me. The wound was healed, of course, but the Crown can respect and fulfill that wish to die fighting. I keep that secret scar now, as a reminder. Will you manage to mark me, Sylvester? I doubt it."

Duncan was there, and then he wasn't. I coughed; the black wood had no doubt found its way into my lungs by now. I didn't suppose I would live long enough for it to matter.

“Your Lillian has received a promotion. She is assigned to the Nobles who now enjoy Mary, under appropriate safeguards. She, at least, will serve the Crown, until I say otherwise, and I will say otherwise when I have devised a fitting punishment, or when Mary tries to kill her." 

I was saved from having to reply by the chittering noise of my first trap activating.

The Lord Infante clenched a fist, and his marksmen fired into the horde of rat-like miniature warbeasts. He raised his arm, and his stitched threw something like grenades. Each blossomed into a right-angled maze of tendrils along the ground, like something I’d seen long before, and the rat-things sizzled on contact. The Infante himself hadn’t even broken stride.

He was a monster. So was I.

Each of the rats had been seeded with Reminiscence, but the black tendrils took on a jelly-like texture, melting into more liquid than I would have thought possible. The pool flowed out and forward, bathing the plaguebeasts in what no doubt contained a counteragent like a carpet for the Infante’s entrance. It would have been striking if the ground hadn't been covered in black wood already.

"You inconvenience me, Sylvester. I will spend another hour or so under the knife for your impudence. Is that all your life is worth?"

I threw a lever, trumpet still in hand, and the ground behind me began to slide open.

The second trap went off. I’d buried enough explosives to bring down Radham’s gate in the ground, but the black muck bubbled and went still.

“Worse, you grow predictable. I rescind my offer.”

I turned away, toward the pit I had opened.

“No more banter, Sylvester? No wit, no jabs? Your Jessie is right here.”

He would bring his hands around, I knew, and Jessie would be in them. Her eyes would scream for me to run, or to kill myself. I couldn’t turn back. I couldn’t see her face, no matter how desperately I wanted to. There was only one lamb left to me, and seeing Jessie might have broken my resolve.

“I imagine you already have her, don’t you? Wyvern will turn your waking dreams into nightmares. Has the phantom caterpillar you keep in your mind betrayed you yet?”

She had. I had seen her slip a knife into me, weeks ago, as a kindness, and I'd patched myself up afterward. She had lasted second-longest of all the lambs in my head. Lillian had tried to make me poison myself, for the good of the world; Mary and Gordon had stabbed and hit me, for the person I once had been; Ashton and Helen urged me, with all their considerable abilities, to listen or die; Evette attacked me daily, though I kind of expected betrayal from her anyways. It wasn't personal, with her. That was just how she was.

Jamie was the last, but he wouldn’t even look at me.

They were poor company. Luckily, I’d had someone else to tell stories to.

I would never be able to best the Infante myself. His overwhelming power couldn’t be negotiated with, manipulated, or even lied to. I had always been a communicator, and Fray had understood that. She’d gotten herself caught, bought me a year and a little more, and that had been all I’d needed.

My throat was raw, but I set the megaphone aside and spoke plainly. 

“Surrender, Lord Infante, or I jump.”

I would throw my body into the pit as I had thrown so many others. It would be fitting, I figured.

“There was never any other way this could end. Suicide, Sylvester? Tiresome. Or do you intend to unleash some new impotent threat?”

“I agree, actually, and it’s not suicide,” I said. “Rebirth, if I’m lucky. Devastation if I’m not.”

The Lord Infante spat, and I heard a muffled sound from Jessie. There was disgust in his voice.

“You murdered children to draw Crown forces in, and you speak of religion. Hardly surprising.

“That wasn’t the only reason I killed them. It did factor in, though, so you’re not completely wrong.”

The Infante didn’t deign to answer me, so I forced his hand.

“Did Fray ever tell you about her trump card?”

He stopped. He had to.

“Of course," I said, "she never could have deployed it. She was never very good at helping others understand her.”

“And I,” said the Infante, “understand you, petulant child. Nature is not to be reasoned with. It is to be subjugated."

"I haven't subjugated her. Quite the opposite. She subjugated me."

The Infante threw his head back and laughed, and the laughter shook my bones. "You call yourself a loyal subject? After _this?_ '" He swept his arm back, indicating the dead forest surrounding us both. "Fray believed in Humanity, but she would at least have left something alive. No King or god or force would condone the chaos you have wrought, Sylvester."

I coughed and spat, and the spit was ashen.

“Her name is Evette. If I'd fed her adults, she would have become one. She's a child, and she knows nothing of war, yet, and I hope she never does but I think she will have to. I've told her stories. She’s clever, and she’s funny, or trying to be, and in the months we’ve known each other, she’s learned to speak. She’s an experiment, just like I am, and she’s been chained down, just like I have. She’s my daughter, something you, Lard Infant, will never know. First Augustus is a farce. I would give anything up for her, and I would destroy anything for her.”

I smiled, because I had something he never had, and because something in me found the name Lard Infant hilarious, even still.

“She’s a Lamb, as deadly as Helen, Gordon, and Mary, as powerful as Ashton, as brilliant as Jamie, and almost as good looking as me. And you know what else? She’s good. She’s good like Lillian and Jessie are, good in a way I never can be. At least, that’s what I think. If I’m wrong, well, I won’t be around to see her grow, but you will. Back when you let me go, I took a drop of your blood. Damned stuff ate right through my knife, but I got it contained eventually. I taught her who you were, and I taught her you needed to die.”

Tears were running down my face, leaving skin-colored trails. I refused to let myself blink, drinking in the sweet naked horror on the Lord Infante's face. 

“I’ve experimented, of course. I've given her warbeasts and bacteria and children to eat, as her toys. She knows brains better than any doctor ever will. She knows the name of every child I've fed her, and she can pull memories out that she’s never even experienced. What do you think would happen if I gave her some Wyvern?”

I coughed again, deeper. "Find out."

“I’m sorry, Jessie. Fuck you, Lord Infante.”

And then, in a softer voice:

“Goodbye, Lambs. I trust you, Evette.”

I fell. Tendrils reached up, waiting to take me apart and experience all of me, to eat of me and grow strong. I lost consciousness before I hit the bottom.

**Author's Note:**

> just an idea i had or whatever.


End file.
